Too many or Too Few Rights

Do we have too many rights, or to few?

When our founding fathers wrote the constitution and laid the groundwork for our country they intended to create the most free country in the entire world. The rights that we are privileged enough to have are those like free speech, religion,  and many among those. I personally believe that freedoms now in this era are being expanded, we now have the internet and are being constantly exposed to wrong doings, both by and not by the government. This allows us to analyze the rights that we already have and the rights that we should have while keeping certain restrictions on them to keep us safe at home. Anything involving freedom in personal life should be free, and anything impeding on someones life should be stopped. I believe in hands-off government as much as possible but that we should pull together to achieve public goals. So yes and no, rights are not defined by the rules, but how you use or not use them. That doesn't mean we should push them to their limits that means we need to 'upgrade' what we define as freedom as a nation.

Support your post by citing at least three specific cases discussed in our presentations.

1. The right to bear arms: in recent times people have been seen to take advantage of this greatly. Instead of using weapons to protect themselves and their family, people are threatening others during school or are even selling underage people weapons. In United States versus Miller, a man was caught smuggling weapons illegally and then selling them to violent gangs. This, although looked upon as a 'freedom' is never actually legal and therefore is more of a blip than anything else. No matter if we have that freedom or not, people will always end up with weapons one way or another. However, I do believe that this personal freedom is often put on a pedestal when it should be more highly regulated.

2. Illinois versus Gates. When a couple is found with over 250 pound of weed are they found guilty? No, not because they weren't committing a crime, but because the police did not have a warrant and it therefore was unconstitutional and the couple was released. Although this did break a belief that you were innocent until found guilty and that they needed probable cause before searching, it brought the question of rules over assumption even though they were right. Here we see the rights being abused by this couple but us as a country learning a great lesson. It is good we keep probable cause though because otherwise we all could be monitored and no one would ever consider that freedom.

3. Snyder versus Phelps, otherwise known as the Westboro Baptist Church was the case that allowed the legal protest of funerals. The 'church' outrightly protests dead people and pretty much everything you can think of. In the case they offended people just trying to mourn for their family and then the family took them to court. Since then many bills have been passed so that they can still protest but father than 500 feet away from the service and building. This personally is disgusting but is allowed under the freedoms our nation gives us. They should be allowed to do it but ethically should they? No.